“On the second question, I think the proper level of punishment in this case would be based primarily on the principle of what lawyers call “special deterrence.” In plain English, here’s the key question: What punishment was the minimum necessary to deter Swartz from continuing to try to use unlawful means to achieve his reform goals? I don’t think I know the answer to that question, but that’s the question I would answer to determine the proper level of punishment.” He argues that Aaron’s announced ideals would lead him to violate the law again and that therefore the prosecutor would be right to ask for a sentence sufficient to stop that hypothetical continued criminal conduct.

Now maybe this is right. But I think it is a lot more revolutionary than Orin gives it credit for and a lot more contentious than his post suggests. I return to the Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks examples. (Or if you prefer, the anti-abortion activist who trespasses on Planned Parenthood in order to spray paint his slogan.)

Legislatures had enacted segregation laws. If Dr. King trespasses and violates state rules mandating segregation, and announces that he considers these laws wrong and that he will encourage others to do the same in the future, do we really believe that the prosecutor should ramp up the penalty until it would amount to special deterrence? What would that take? Death? Life imprisonment? Is that then “not disproportionate”? I would have thought that one of the reasons we treat the protester who acts out of conviction (even conviction we disagree with) more leniently, is that we recognize that this is not mere profit seeking, not mere personal interest, and that in the past, such protesters have eventually changed our minds about the rightness of the actions the law prohibits. There are limits to leniency, surely. But there seem few limits on Orin’s special deterrence.

I'm quite confident that Professor Boyle doesn't really believe Christians have the right to vandalize abortion clinics. As he makes quite clear by his use of Movement dog-whistles such as "reform" and "change," what he really means is: the Party has the right to change the law, by displaying its own power to protect, even glorify, those who break it. The kulaks? Neighbor, don't be ridiculous. The kulak exists to be beaten. This is why "kulak" means "fist."

"Special deterrence" is just one of the many 20th-century euphemisms which we use to cover the fact that we know perfectly well that might makes right. That is: Christians do not in fact have the right to vandalize abortion clinics (and get away with it, as Professor Boyle and I agree in wishing Aaron Swartz had gotten away with his JSTOR hack.)

Why don't Christians have the right to vandalize abortion clinics? Because they do not have the might to do so (and get away with it). If they did, Christians would be on top and progressives would be on the bottom. We would live in a different country - one in which, as in most legal codes in human history around the globe, abortion was considered a serious crime. And there would be, of course, no such thing as an "abortion clinic."

My advice to every sort of activist is: whatever the law is, wherever you are, follow it at all times. Don't even ask whether you have the power to break it and get away with it. If you have to ask - you don't. If you don't have to ask, why are you asking me?

As a power structure the American political system is a real work of art. For instance, one of the most basic ways to show power over someone is to take away something he has and wants to keep. It doesn't have to be anything valuable, either to you or to him. Though it can be. Ideally, though, it's of no real value to you, but considerable value (perhaps only sentimental or irrational value) to him. That way, it's clear to everyone what the exercise is about: as Lenin put it, who beats whom.

I actually think it's really wonderful that President Obama, even before the second term of his historic presidency, has jumped out so hard on the good old reliable beat-the-kulaks campaign trail. It's always fun to be an overdog. But never forget to actually play the part. If you stop beating people, they might forget that you're in charge.

Moreover, that creates a situation of great potential entertainment for our most important branch of the entertainment industry. It has two sides: those who want A to beat B, and those who want B not to be beaten. These are extreme positions, of course. The moderate center believes that B should certainly be beaten, but not too badly - a sane position that almost always prevails. It is actually rumored that a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, it was actually B who beat and A who was beaten. But no one can actually believe it.

As for the poor kulak? Well, it used to be well-known that the poor need poverty. (Then it was forgotten - and had to be proven.) Similarly, chumbolones need to be beaten. For what other stimulus could possibly rescue them from their eternal chumpitude? And if nothing can so rescue them, don't they deserve to be beaten, beaten and beaten again? I salute the President for his bold stand on gun control and other controversial "social" issues. Go for the throat, Mr. President!

37 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Mencius,

Have you considered given recent events and the passions aroused by them that Hamilton's "Great Beast" is awakening to it's plight? I know you can't stand the idea [democracy, The Republic] however...the reboot has gotten closer. Do consider that the Progs stand astride the world because they had Jacksonian America [Mead, and he's correct] doing their fighting for them, and now The Worst Ruling Class Ever has not only offered endless insult but is clumsily demanding their arms?

Now it doesn't matter for this question what you think of them. [I don't think you know them in any case]. It matters the Beast is awake and angry.

What I think is that for 50 years the people had Liberty, for the next 100 they had Sovereignty as well, the New Deal took away Sovereignty and they were only dimly aware. Now openly ruined, arrogant effete fools demand they disarm. They also have noticed Constitutional Lawyers such as Louis Seidman feel it's time to drop the mask.

Again I point out it's one thing to have Jacksonian America conquering for you, it's another to have it first suspicious and then enraged at you.

Christians' problem in the US isn't power. It's will. For instance, I'd NEVER vote to convict anyone for doing ANYTHING to an abortionist, clinic, or even 'pro-choice' advocacy group on a jury. If, say, 20% of Christians in the US felt the same way, trial by jury would be defeated on the issue and you would quickly see change.

There's a special kind of blue pill taken by the typical Christian Vaisya, one which is especially resistant to certain forms of red-pill effort. That resistance is being worn away, and even distorted, as - as Anonymous at top put it - the Beast is getting tired of being taunted.

Progressives firmly in place as the overdog, the political "Right" is becoming more dynamic - or more accurately, there's a hole being ripped in the progressive-conservative fabric, and it's filling with black powder.

I don't see anything in Boyle's post to indicate he thinks the anti-abortion protestor should be treated differently than anyone else who engages in idealistic civil disobedience. He doesn't say any of them have the "right" to do something, just that he disagrees with Kerr on "special deterrence" and thinks we should be more lenient to those who act out of idealism rather than self-interest.

A counter to the special deterrence view is Mitt Romney's misunderstanding that a fine is a price. You can break some minor laws if you are willing to pay for it. In terms of an economic analysis of efficient law, it's not always clear that view is mistaken. Back when video rental places still existed, you could keep on returning movies late as long as you paid the extra fee (I've heard Jakob Dylan would do that all the time).

I didn't know this post was up when I came over to link the following:Essays in Rebellion by Henry W. Nevinson, 1913.Slate referred to him as a Christian writer, but oddly enough he has praise for things he calls "demonic" or akin to Satan in their irritation of the lethargic. There's plenty on how the State abhors rebels and demands they be crushed, while Nevinson more sympathetic and notes the common romanticization of rebels. I will note that his inclusion of Joan of Arc in that list sounds mistaken, she sought to serve the legitimate king of France.

Anonymous, I've never seen evidence that Mead knows anything about anything, and plenty that he frequently speaks out of ignorance. He speaks of a tradition of "Jacksonian" foreign policy, but the foreign policy of the actual Jackson administration wasn't particularly distinctive. Mead seems to imagine a well-spring of support for some foreign policy stance in the heartland, but it's really the elites who focus on foreign policy. I've never seen Mead cite polling data to support his contentions, he seems as allergic to empirical evidence as Whiskey/testing99/evil neocon.

Today, the largest university system in the world, the California State University system, announced a pilot for $150 lower-division online courses at one of its campuses — a move that spells the end of higher education as we know it. Lower-division courses are the financial backbone of many part-time faculty and departments (especially the humanities). As someone who has taught large courses at a University of California, I can assure readers that my job could have easily been automated. Most of college–the expansive campuses and large lecture halls–will crumble into ghost towns as budget-strapped schools herd students online.

He doesn't say any of them have the "right" to do something, just that he disagrees with Kerr on "special deterrence" and thinks we should be more lenient to those who act out of idealism rather than self-interest.

TGGP, Boyle doesn't say any of them have the "right" to do something. But he intends it. If "we" (the law) treat certain kinds of protester leniently, "we" have in practice given them the legal right to do their thing.

And the "we" who define "idealism" is the group of people with power. "We" are unlikely to regard white nationalist or Christian law-breaking as "acts of convinction", which ought to be given legal slack—even though they would be valid examples in an English comprehension class.

The literal meaning and the (consciously or subconsciously) intended effect of words from influential lips often differ.

If I had to predict how the fallout of this pilot will go, here’s my timeline:

1. Pilot succeeds, expands to more universities and classes

2. Part-time faculty get laid off, more community colleges are shuttered, extracurricular college services are closed, and humanities and arts departments are dissolved for lack of enrollment (science enrollment increases–yay!?)

And the joke about specific deterrence is that it neutralizes "let the punishment fit the crime" and replaces it with "let the punishment fit the criminal."

And there's all kind of forbidden mischief one could think of there with regards to individual differences in tendency towards violence, sexual self-control, impulse discipline, etc. None of those are actually permitted, naturally.

Take it a step further - the theory of specific deterrence means that we should max out the punishments on everything as a matter of general deterrence. If you're convicted of the crime - it means that whatever you knew about the expected value of your punishment (legal fiction, nobody actually knows) wasn't enough to deter you by definition.

Handle, yes the traditional analysis of disincentivizing crime (associated with Gary Becker) says you increase punishment to the point where a lawbreaker realizes it is a bad idea to do so. But there is a problem with that idea in that it neglects hyperbolic discounting. Criminals discount punishment when they are less certain to get caught in the first place (I believe most crimes are never punished), and the punishment is further away. That includes later years of a multi-year prison sentence. That's why Mark Kleiman recommends short, swift and sure punishment in "When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment". Part of his argument is based on how the current legal system functions, where there is a lot of costly due process associated with harsher punishments, but it's really not surprising in any system where the accused has access to lawyers that it's easier to reach an agreement for something like spending just the next two nights in jail. Empirically, even such laughable punishments have been very effective at deterrence in programs like Hawaii's H.O.P.E. Of course, that was habitually offending meth addicts, rather than idealistic civil disobedience.

Federico, the esoteric meaning of Boyle's post is an apologia for Hitler. The esoteric meaning of Moldbug's is a reply on behalf of Stalin. Didn't you notice? Just keep on reading Strauss unless the hidden secrets are revealed.

And there's all kind of forbidden mischief one could think of there with regards to individual differences in tendency towards violence, sexual self-control, impulse discipline, etc. None of those are actually permitted, naturally.

We already sort of have this in the form of drug laws that have done such a wonderful job putting feral negroes behind bars.

whatever the law iswherever you arefollow it at all timesdon't even ask whether you have the power to break it and get away with itif you have to ask - you don'tif you don't have to ask, why are you asking me?

Actually, I'd think that Ghandi would agree that civil disobedience is a sign of power and not weakness. The idea is that you refuse to be deterred, and force authorities to actively enforce the laws usually passively followed - when they're no longer willing to do so you've presumably won.

In that sense then, leniency in cases of civil disobedience is a valuable control strategy - they refuse to incur the costs of surpressing you, but reserve the right to come down upon everyone not in your protest-du-jour (and maybe even you, later, when the heat is off), preserving most of their deterrent.

The analogue for this would be, don't sic the dogs on the march; hand out $50 jaywalking tickets as fast as you can write them, and jail everyone who doesn't show up in court in person to pay them.

Federico, the esoteric meaning of Boyle's post is an apologia for Hitler. The esoteric meaning of Moldbug's is a reply on behalf of Stalin. Didn't you notice?

Funny, but this is legalistic thinking, not Bayesian. It's terribly unfair not to take Boyle at his word—or to assume that Juan Manuel Marquez has been taking PEDs, when he passed the tests—but still a good inference.

If Boyle had used Horst Wessel as an example, instead of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, and was part of an anti-Semitic ruling class that inches ever-rightwards, the probability of your inference would increase, even though the words he uttered about "conviction" and "leniency" would be unchanged.

Do you really expect Boyle to put in the same good word for Christian, Nashi or WN activism, if the level of conviction and collateral damage be similar? If not, you must concede that Moldbug has spotted a mote of dark arts. If so, that's certainly a bet I would take.

Tsst, tssst, Mencius, I am very disappointed in your disappointment on this blog. It sounds peevish. Do the people on this blog truly believe that we are little calculating machines behaving always with our best interest in mind, in true positivist fashion ?Amazing how the 33 year old hippie who lived a hand to mouth existence, was supported by a group of admiring women, lived by his words, and did no.. WORK managed, and still manages to hold this civilization captive.And after being crucified to boot.Such an eloquent disclaimer of might makes right I have never met. Undiscovered Jew, you are cheering the disappearance of liberal arts ?You will find that science will be next on the list..In France there is a joke that goes "When they came to take the Communists away, I didn't say anything because I wasn't Communist. When they came to take the Jews away, I didn't say anything... etc. When they came to take the union workers away, I didn't say anything... etc. And when they came to take me away there was nobody left to stop them."That's what I call a perspicaceous analysis of the less is more bulldozer when it gets rolling. Nothing to stop it.I live in a neck of the woods which is experimenting with implanting microchips in human beings in order to control their "aggressive" impulses.The worldwide paradise cum theme park Disneyland has never been so close...Perhaps we will all be Prozacly happy when we lie down alongside the lions and the lambs ?I doubt it...

"[W]e recognize that this is not mere profit seeking, not mere personal interest..."

Yes, Aaron Swartz was a saint (and now martyr) of the internet age and act out of service to God (except that he didn't believe in God). That he would have acquired a zillion quatloos of prestige from his fellow hackers and favorable press coverage (as well as maybe a few lucrative speaking gigs payable by wire transfer of US$ to his agent's account) did not figure into his calculus at all. No way.

Now, anyone who is, internetGod forbid, actually doing business and interest in a profit, HE should REALLY be beaten.

You completely missing Mead. He writes of four American policy schools; Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian, Jacksonian. He also writes more often now about Jacksonian America - which you may respectively consider the Tea Party or the miltiary demographic if you like. I am going to contend that 1) it is awake 2) it's angry 3) it's power.

And hence my point above. Whither Reboot and the people?======EOM TGGP==========Et al,

Now if these feckless fools of what will be a transitory ruling class are so arrogant as to assert themselves openly over democracy and publicly declare the Constitution "Dead Parchment" is approaching the Great Question from a purely academic standpoint.

And since I'm a paid in full blood member of said Jacksonian demographic by Academic I mean; Coward.

You cannot even claim you miss it, you simply are at the moment..shirking. It's quite alright most people are cowards.

However it might be wise then to retire from the Great Question..since you mean to do nothing about it.

If we want snarky, shirking, snide elites there's no need to make the effort. We've got that now. As far as any putative Patchwork competence...the Cathedral pathetic wretches that they are is ruling...which means Dear Sirs they are and should remain overdog...over you. The Prime Requirement of a Master is that they are: Stronger. Currently that's the Cathedral.

"Now if these feckless fools of what will be a transitory ruling class are so arrogant as to assert themselves openly over democracy and publicly declare the Constitution "Dead Parchment" is approaching the Great Question from a purely academic standpoint. ....THEN they leave themselves open to the much maligned people. Candid these fools should not be.

BTW, they keep showing pictures of the 15 year old Aaron instead of the 26 year old who died (just like they show pictures of former 12 year old Trayvon and not the thug Trayvon who exists now). I realize that agit-prop is all we get, but couldn't they be a LITTLE less obvious about it. By the way, what did 15 year old Nixon look like?

Unfriended over Politics --Any debate with Progs: the question must always be put: what Power do you seek and over who? Because that is actually all the Progs seek. However it is entirely possible to be unfriended not out of disagreement but fear of censure. A justified fear. Mind you...our forbears faced far worse justified fears than censure. So perhaps there's a question we should now ask ourselves; what power will I submit to and who are they? Are they even strong enough to be the ones Americans should bow before? When they themselves cower before mere censure.

Federico, the problem is not merely that ignoring someone's words is "unfair", but that it means a license to bullshit. If you want to talk about how people actually behave, I would remind you that the ACLU famously defended the right of Nazis to march through Skokie, and less famously (unfortunately, since its a mark against them) a California chapter defended the right of some other Nazis to wear swastikas in a private restaurant that wanted them out! See also the Westboro Baptist Church. I don't know much about Boyle, and neither do you or Moldbug. You really don't have basis for ignoring his explicit statement about anti-abortion protestors.

Horst Wessel is not a good analogue since he's known for being killed by Rotfront streetfighters rather than Reaktion. As Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad would say "It's been known to happen". A better example would be Albert Leo Schlageter, whom the communist Karl Radek did say was admirable.

VXXC, I don't have any reason to identify the "Tea Party" with "Jacksonianism", since I think the term is more Mead-ian bullshit than anything helpful in understanding. And I don't think it's particularly powerful either, there's not enough support even among the elderly-tending Tea Party supporters for cutting the bulk of the welfare state (which mostly goes to the elderly) so it ends up amounting to a bunch of pointless grand-standing.

There are people, but generally when someone talks of "the people" with unified agency, they're full of it. As per the iron law of oligarchy, the people are always ruled by the elite few. And for the most part, the masses assent to how they are ruled.

TGGP, I agree with you that of course, genuine liberals—people who think it better to open a public space for diverse institutions to grow, than to impose their limited ideas of social organisation on everyone—do exist. Otherwise, we wouldn't be enjoying the fruits of civic evolution.

We probably don't disagree all that much. What I am saying is that "legally", one could impeach Boyle of nothing. What he says about anti-abortion protestors is laudable. But, legal evidence is not identical to rational evidence. There is a single correct Bayesian estimate for whether the part of Boyle's brain that motivated these utterances did so because it expects the consequences to be equal leniency towards broadly progressive and rightist activism.

I don't know much about Boyle, but I do know that:

1. He has been employed by a series of institutions that are government-funded, and which have a large, progressive influence in society.

2. In his essay he stressed progressive examples like MLK, rather than abstract libertarian ideas. He might e.g. have quoted Hayek:

"The attitude of the liberal toward society is like that of the gardener who tends a plant and, in order to create the conditions most favorable to its growth, must know as much as possible about its structure and the way it functions."

and developed the idea that legal prejudice towards progressive activism is inimical to this. His parenthetical claim about anti-abortion activism is satisfactory in pure information content, but weak in its persuasive effect.

3. He uses progressive jargon.

I recall that you made a good point in discussion of "the emperor of China's nose" with Moldbug: a little knowledge is quite different to complete ignorance. These three items of evidence are enough to tell me: Boyle's brain does not expect his words to facilitate lenient treatment of rightist activists, in comparison to leftist activists. By the same token, unless he is stupid he does not intend to facilitate all kinds of activism, even though the pure information content of his words suggests such a thing.

In fact, since Western society is biased towards progressivism, if that were his intention he would have placed more stress on the importance of letting rightist activists break the law without serious consequences, because they are least likely to enjoy this freedom.

This is a point worth making. It improves my inferences. I would not mistakenly believe e.g. that voices like Boyle's are a sufficient guarantee of liberty, or worthy of support. I have the same opinion of the econlog writers.

As for: the problem is not merely that ignoring someone's words is "unfair", but that it means a license to bullshit

It certainly requires care, but to assume that no-one ever lies or dissimulates is a very inadequate heuristic. In fact a plausible evolutionary origin for the "subconscious mind" is that it permits self-deception, which facilitates deception of other people.

My simpler theory is that most of those who engage in civil disobedience lean left (Mencius would say that antinomianism is what defines the left). The ones who don't aren't much of an issue, even if they are offensive to behold. I don't know if Boyle has had any involvement in pro-choice politics (other than voting for the preferred politicians), but I'd guess it's not a top priority for him. He's noticed that the Supreme Court legalized abortion decades ago, there's been a lot of sound and fury since then and nothing has changed. Even if the median justice leans right and wouldn't have signed onto Roe in the first place, they also aren't going to rock the boat. On the issues he writes the most about, there is no civil disobedience on the other side. If he was really worried about one of his sacred cows being gored, he'd sing a different tune.

We should note the idiocy of the Progs in showing their true face. No man or god ever ruled men as Koba did...find a picture of him or any around him smirking. In fact find public pictures of any ruler, dictator, aristocrat ever smirking. And I don't find it in prior democrats either...

Your bias is against action I think. Very well. Now things WILL change ..bankruptcy does that. They who change..decide.

I realized last night who this man Obama wishes to be: Bismarck - unifying America under an Iron Prussian Collective.

He does not have of course the Prussian Civil Service, nor the Army. Nor did the Prussians treat Germany as their own personal El Dorado. As these men are.

US interest rates are set by the Fed, who are loaning money to themselves. It is possible I suppose for this state of affairs to continue much longer than sane people would like. It does not however end well.